The ski jump sits shrouded in mist, its coat of snow undisturbed by any athletes hurtling down to take off into the air. A year ago, the jump bustled with activity at the Sochi Olympics. But it made unwanted history as well, becoming a symbol of how some of the plans for President Vladimir Putin's $51 billion Winter Games went terribly wrong. The cost of the facility soared from $40 million to nearly $300 million — an overrun that caused the businessman involved to flee a corruption investigation. Russia had vowed to pay for what became the most expensive Olympics...

After 30 years of disastrous multi-billion-dollar public construction disasters, cost overruns, and scandals, it appears that a bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics in Boston may be the last straw for overtaxed voters in the deep-blue state of Massachusetts. Two weeks ago, the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC) gave Boston the nod as the American city to bid for the 2024 summer games. In its presentation, the pro-games group Boston 2024 smugly informed the USOC that “Boston is overwhelmingly united in its bid.” Er, no. Critics quickly began comparing the Olympics to the “Big Dig,” the ambitious downtown Boston highway project...

DENVER -- The U.S. Olympic Committee chose Boston to bid for the 2024 Games in an attempt to bring the Summer Olympics to America after a 28-year gap. During a daylong meeting at the Denver airport, USOC board members chose Boston over Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, all of which have been lobbying to become the American choice for more than a year.

A decision Thursday by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will apply new restrictive anti-family pressure on nations wanting to host the Olympic Games. On December 8, the IOC unanimously approved a wide-ranging package of 40 recommendations, the Olympic Agenda 2020, that includes a rewording of its anti-discrimination Principle 6 clause to include a reference to "sexual orientation" as a protected category.Hosting the games, or â€˜belonging to the Olympic movementâ€™ as its styled by the IOC, â€œrequires compliance with the Olympic Charter and recognition by the IOC." Thus, countries hoping to host Olympic Games in the future, such as the two...

On Tuesday the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) announced plans to partner with two leading homosexual advocacy groups to promote the homosexual agenda among current Olympic athletes, and Olympic hopefuls in Canadian schools. The COC signed an agreement with You Can Play and Egale Canada in order to "foster LGBTQ inclusivity in national sport" by creating homosexuality-focused "resources" to be incorporated into the Canadian Olympic School Program (COSP), which will focus its efforts on students from grades six to eight. The initiative will also create a new "OneTeam Athlete Ambassador" program, which will promote visits to schools across the country by...

Israel must formally declare Palestinian Authority (PA) Chairman Mahmoud Abbas responsible for the 1972 Munich massacre, the Students for Israel movement appealed to the Ministry of Defense Tuesday. From September 5-6 1972, masked terrorists stormed the apartments where Israeli athletes were staying in the Olympic Village for the 1972 Munich games. The terrorists took the athletes as hostages and demanded the release of 200 Arabs from Israeli prisons. After several tense hours, the terrorists killed the Israeli athletes. Nonetheless, the Games continued for several hours afterward. Over the past several years, it has been revealed on multiple occasions that Abbas...

There's a lot to like in the International Olympic Committee's "Olympic Agenda 2020" — IOC president Thomas Bach's 40-point reform plan designed to make the Olympics more desirable to potential host cities. The plan calls for the use of existing venues, rather than the construction of expensive stadiums that could become white elephants, as we saw with the 2004 Olympics in Athens. It calls for common-sense reforms like promoting gender equality and placing limits on the number of total events in the Olympics. It also calls for a bunch of cost-reduction measures, like letting international federations run events rather than...

Before he checked into rehab in September, Michael Phelps was having a steamy affair with much older blonde, Taylor Lianne Chandler. But the most shocking aspect of their relationship wasn’t the 12-year age difference. RadarOnline.com can exclusively reveal that Chandler, 41, was actually born a man! Chandler, born David Roy Fitch, tells Radar in an exclusive interview that she was an intersex baby.

Ever since he was a kid, Mark Schultz idolized his older brother. So when Dave Schultz was murdered in cold blood by his athletic sponsor, the eccentric millionaire John du Pont, Mark's entire world was turned upside down. "Losing Dave was like losing my anchor," Mark tells PEOPLE. "Dave was like a one-man cult and I was his follower. When he was killed, I was left floating free, wondering what to do." Mark recounts the story of his brother's senseless death in his new memoir Foxcatcher, out Nov. 18. The events are also the basis for a movie of the...

The bidding process for the 2022 Olympics was a disaster for the International Olympic Committee. Democratic nations are no longer buying the argument that hosting the games is a wise investment. Every potential 2022 host city with a democratic government eventually pulled out of the bidding, many over economic concerns, leaving Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan, as the IOC's only two options. Academics have been saying for years that hosting the Olympics doesn't make economic sense. The costs are typically larger than expected, the infrastructure needed for a big sporting event isn't the same as the infrastructure needed for daily life,...

The bidding process for the 2022 Olympics was a disaster for the International Olympic Committee. Democratic nations are no longer buying the argument that hosting the games is a wise investment. Every potential 2022 host city with a democratic government eventually pulled out of the bidding, many over economic concerns, leaving Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan as the IOC's only two options. Academics have been saying for years that hosting the Olympics doesn't make economic sense. The costs are typically larger than expected, the infrastructure needed for a big sporting event isn't the same as the infrastructure needed for daily life,...

OSLO, Norway -- Oslo said it has dropped its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics after the Norwegian government declined Wednesday to provide financial backing, a move which leaves just two cities in a race that has been decimated by withdrawals. After Oslo's withdrawal, Beijing and Almaty, Kazakhstan are the only two cities left vying to host the 2022 Games. Members of the ruling Conservative party members voted against giving financial guarantees to the bid amid concerns the games would be too costly. The junior partner in the minority coalition voted against the bid four months ago, and polls have...

Built as part of a £7billion project, they played host to millions of spectators, athletes and officials during the 2004 Summer Olympics in Greece. But now, ten years on, the state-of-the-art sports venues in the Olympics' spiritual home of Athens lie empty, completely unused and decaying. The Games, which cost almost twice their projected budget and used permanent instead of collapsible venues, were deemed a success at the time. However, Greece was shortly hit by the global financial crisis and, with no real post-games plan, the prestigious venues were abandoned.

Ten years later, the 2004 Athens Olympics is a cautionary tale. Greece spent an estimated $11 billion on the Games, Reuters reports. They built all the expensive, highly specific buildings you need to host the Olympics — a village, a media center, an Olympic stadium, a canoe/kayak slalom center, etc. — and went 97% over budget in the process. When the athletes went home at the end of August 2004, organizers learned a cruel lesson — Athens has absolutely no use for a canoe/kayak slalom center. Many of these stadiums have become white elephants. The Olympic Village is empty, and...

<p>Brazil may have never wanted for places to play soccer, but that didn’t stop the country from spending billions of dollars on stadiums for last month’s World Cup.</p>
<p>The Arena Amazonia, a $300 million edifice designed to look like a woven basket, was built in a rain-forest city where the professional team regularly draws fewer than 2,000 fans per game. And Brazil is only getting started.</p>

ALBANY, GA (WALB) - Alice Coachman Davis, the first black female to win Olympic gold, died Monday. She was 90 years old. Coachman Davis suffered a stroke in April, and died at an Albany hospital Monday morning.

Four Slovenian ski officials were suspended Friday for allegedly rigging the results of pop violinist Vanessa-Mae to help her qualify for the Winter Olympics in Sochi. Competing in Sochi for Thailand as Vanessa Vanakorn, using the surname of her Thai father, she finished a distant last among the 67 racers who completed the two runs in the Olympic giant slalom. To earn enough points to be eligible for the games in February, she had to compete in official races in Sweden, Norway, Slovenia and Switzerland. The Slovenian Ski Association said Friday it found evidence indicating that the races it hosted...

Louis Zamperini, a former Olympic runner and war hero who survived 47 days at sea and three years in a Japanese POW camp after his plane crashed in the Pacific during World War II, died of pneumonia late Wednesday. He was 97. "After a 40-day long battle for his life, he peacefully passed away in the presence of his entire family, leaving behind a legacy that has touched so many lives," Zamperini's family said in a statement, according to Deadline. "His indomitable courage and fighting spirit were never more apparent than in these last days." The Olean, N.Y., native's astonishing...

If the U.S. Olympic Committee decides to enter a city in the selection process, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Washington are the host site contendersSan Francisco is one of four U.S. cities on a short list of possible host sites for the 2024 Summer Olympics, part of a lengthy and expensive process that will not result in a selection for about three more years An American bid would come from Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco or Washington, if the U.S. Olympic Committee decides to put a city in the running. A United States Olympic Committee process that began 16...

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA.com) — The city of Los Angeles is on a short-list of four finalists to potentially host the 2024 Summer Olympic Games, officials announced Friday. San Francisco, Boston and Washington, D.C., landed the other three spots on the United States Olympic Committee list of potential bidders for the game following its board of directors meeting earlier this week outside Boston. If Los Angeles is chosen to make the U.S. bid, and is ultimately chosen as host, it would become the first American city to host the Games three times, tying it with London as the only worldwide city...

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Six-time Olympic gold medalist swimmer Amy Van Dyken severed her spine in an all-terrain vehicle accident over the weekend, and told emergency workers she could not move her toes or feel anything touching her legs. The 46-year-old swimmer, who goes by her married name Van Dyken Rouen, was injured Friday. She was airlifted to a hospital and had surgery to stabilize her spine. Hospital spokeswoman Alice Giedraitis didn't provide details Monday on Rouen's injuries. She said the swimmer was in good condition. A letter from the Van Dyken and Rouen families said she severed her spinal cord...

The next Olympics to be awarded, a little more than a year from now, will be the 2022 Winter Games. Rather than going to the strongest bid, the games may end up going to the last city standing—a long list of potential hosts have given up on their Olympic dreams because the whole thing is one huge, useless waste of money. Yesterday, Krakow, Poland, officially withdrew its bid for the games, a day after a citywide referendum where 70 percent of voters came out against hosting the Olympics. "Krakow is closing its efforts to be the host of the 2022...

Yikes! During training of the cadet corps of the Units of Pacifying Police (UPP) in Rio de Janeiro last week, Brazilian police evidently thought it would be a swell idea to let this girl with zero experience toss a grenade -- a LIVE grenade. Well let's just say it didn't exactly go as planned... WATCH:

Rio's preparations damned as 'worst ever' but IOC knocks down suggestion London could be last-ditch replacementMisty-eyed fans can forget about digging out their Team GB shirts, the army of 2012 volunteers can leave their distinctive purple uniforms in the wardrobe, and Boris Johnson can stand down. Much to the disappointment of those hoping for an action replay of the heady summer of 2012, the International Olympic Committee has rejected as "totally unfeasible" claims that London could step in for troubled Rio to host the 2016 Olympics. A report in the London Evening Standard has claimed that the capital had been...

So worried are Olympic organisers by how far behind schedule the 2016 Rio Games has fallen, London has reportedly been asked, in secret, if it could host the event at the last minute. According to the London Evening Standard, an informal approach has been made by IOC chiefs to ascertain whether London's 2012 Olympic venues could be brought back into use.

The International Olympic Committee on Wednesday announced that it has awarded NBCUniversal the broadcast rights in the USA for the Olympic Games through 2032. NBC was in competition with ABC/ESPN and Fox/Fox Sports.

A Finnish man attempted to 'hijack' a plane using a Toblerone chocolate bar, demanding to be taken to Sochi so he could watch the Winter Olympics. Antti Oskari Manselius, 23, from Finland, had wrapped two economy class blankets around his head, wearing a third as a cape when he waved the chocolate bar 'like a sword' as he walked towards the cockpit. Manselius also made a false bomb threat on the Cathay Pacific flight from Amsterdam to Hong Kong on February 14, and said he was robbing the plane, airplane staff said. SNIP He said he was trying to entertain...

Australian swimming great Ian Thorpe is in intensive care in a Sydney hospital receiving treatment for an infection that could result in him losing the use of his left arm, Australian media reported on Tuesday. The five-times Olympic champion reportedly contracted the bug after surgery at a hospital in Switzerland, where he now lives. In February, Thorpe's manager James Erskine said the 31-year-old was suffering from depression after being found disorientated and behaving oddly near a vehicle in Australia after taking a mixture of anti-depressants and painkillers for a shoulder injury. Thorpe, who made his Games debut in Sydney in...

The future of the Sochi Olympic venues is unclear. Alexander Valov, a Russian reporter for BlogSochi, visited Sochi's "coastal cluster" — a site that includes six venues, the Olympic Village, and the Olympic Park, all built from scratch on an undeveloped plot of land — and he took some eerie photos this week. He called the area around the Olympic Village "Dead City." The photos are a reminder that much of what was built for the Olympics has no long-term use. While a few arenas and other buildings have plans going forward — the media center is being turned into...

Demonstrators from both ends of Brazil's political spectrum clashed briefly Saturday in Rio, where leftists came to blows with a group commemorating 50 years since the military coup. More than 2,000 people meanwhile demonstrated in Sao Paulo, sending out a message to President Dilma Rousseff which read, "Dilma, listen, there will be fighting at the (World) Cup," and there were smaller protests in various other Brazilian cities. "Democracy doesn't exist in Brazil -- we don't have a majority but a slew of minorities, such as Indians and feminists, with Dilma in charge," activist Felipe Paulomo told AFP. "Our government is...

At 15 years of age, Amy Purdy took up snowboarding and quickly advanced in the sport she came to love and master. At 19, Amy contracted meningococcal meningitis. She had less than a 2 percent chance of living. Amy miraculously survived, but not without the life-altering loss of her spleen, her kidneys, the hearing in her left ear and both of her legs below the knee because of the ravage of the disease upon her circulatory system. But against all the odds, Amy learned not only to walk again but also to snowboard. In fact, she became a world champion!...

Costas In Context: His critics owe no apologies by Daniel Clark In a March 3rd appearance on The O’Reilly Factor, NBC sports anchor Bob Costas complained that right-wing ideologues had taken his Olympic remarks about Vladimir Putin “out of context.” Let’s see if that’s true. On the night of the opening ceremonies, Costas said this about the Russian president: “Just in the past year, Putin brokered a deal to allow Syria to avoid a U.S. military strike by giving up its chemical weapons, and helped bring Iran to the negotiating table over its nuclear intentions. He has repeatedly showcased his...

Bob Costas got his infamous case of Olympic pink eye from botched Botox, a source claims to Page Six. NBC’s prime-time Olympics host, who had to take a six-day absence after coming down with viral conjunctivitis in both eyes, contracted the infection after a Botox procedure to smooth out wrinkles prior to the Olympics. Our source said, “Bob’s eye infection was due to botched Botox. This isn’t the first time he’s had it.” NBC strongly denies that Costas — who arrived to host the games in Sochi with a forehead smoother than the Olympic luge track — developed the infection...

The United States announced Monday it would boycott the upcoming Paralympic Games in Sochi to protest Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, as a State Department spokesperson said it was “likely” that the U.S. would impose sanctions on Russia. The boycott effectively means a presidential delegation will not be attending the games, an announcement that comes as President Obama and Congress scramble to respond to Russia’s aggression on Ukrainian territory in Crimea. “In addition to other measures we are taking in response to the situation in Ukraine, the United States will no longer send a Presidential Delegation to the upcoming Winter Paralympic...

MOSCOW - The Sochi Olympics "opened Russia's soul" to the world and wrongfooted critics of the host country, President Vladimir Putin said in remarks broadcast on Tuesday. Taking stock after Russia topped the medals table and avoided major security problems at its first post-Soviet Games, Putin said constructive criticism from the International Olympic Committee had helped make Sochi 2014 a success. But there were other critics whose jabs were motivated by "the competitive struggle in international politics, maybe even geopolitics". "They used the Olympic project to achieve their own aims in the area of anti-Russian propaganda," he said. "Because when...

As soon as the Winter Olympics draw to a close tonight in Sochi, another sport will begin: debate over whether the city will actually benefit from hosting the games. “If costs are the benchmark for ‘successful’ Games,” says Janice Forsyth, Director of the International Center for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada, “Sochi is the most unsuccessful games in history, bar none.” The Sochi organizing committee spent an estimated US$51 billion on the Games, surpassing the next most expensive Olympics (Beijing Summer Games, 2008) by about $8 billion. The problem is that “rarely, if...

From the opening ceremony with a malfunctioning ring, to police officers singing Get Lucky, the Sochi Winter Olympics have been a games to remember. But tonight marks the end for the highly controversial games, which are also the most expensive in Olympic history. Showing that the country has a sense of humour, dancers during the opening section of the show mocked the moment a ring failed to open during the opening ceremony. The joke was followed by an opulent show of ballet, circus performances and classical music, an ode to the country's rich literary history - before the Olympic flame...

I thought I did. Now I know I did. Why is it so hard for the blow hards on our alphabet news networks to give credit to a movie about Texas whose score was written by a Russian born American composer.Obviously, the Russians are proud of him.Why isn't our media? Just because he was a patriot in Hollywood in a time when it wasn't overwhelmingly dominated by Marxists?As soon as the opening dance becomes available on You Tube, I would appreciate it if someone would post it!

<p>Abortion proponents push for easy access to abortion, deemphasizing its after-affects to the point they absolutely refuse to acknowledge post-abortion depression, which further incapacitates those actually living through it.</p>
<p>This is such a tragedy. Charlotte Dawson, RIP, was born in New Zealand but achieved fame in Australia as a model and a judge on Australiaâ€™s Next Top Model.</p>

SOCHI, Russia — Ukraine's victory in the women's biathlon relay was the standout moment of the Sochi Olympics, a powerful symbol of unity during the country's bloody political crisis, IOC President Thomas Bach said Saturday. In an interview with The Associated Press, Bach praised Ukraine's athletes for staying in Sochi to compete for their country despite the violence and turmoil that has left scores dead back home. "In this moment, mourning on the one hand, but knowing what really is going on in your country, seeing your capital burning, and feeling this responsibility, and then winning the gold medal, this...

The head of Russia’s Communist Party held up a hammer-and-sickle Soviet banner during a flower ceremony at the Winter Olympics, leading to a confrontation with staff over violating Olympic rules that bar political statements at the games. A series of photographs taken Friday night shows Gennady Zyuganov in a group of five men in the stands displaying the historic Soviet Banner of Victory toward the podium while medals were being awarded in three short track speedskating events at the Iceberg Skating Palace. The banner was a replica of the flag raised by Soviet soldiers in Berlin in 1945, in victory...

Before he headed to Moscow in January 2012 as Barack Obama’s new ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul was itching to get out of government. He had dreams of moving back to Palo Alto. The weather’s nice, his family missed the place. But Obama had come to rely on McFaul, a longtime Russia scholar and the National Security Council’s point man on the country. So he offered him a posting he couldn’t decline. McFaul’s academic specialty is revolution—a detail that Vladimir Putin, hounded by a bubbling uprising, immediately seized on. State television vilified McFaul as the man Washington had sent to...

Change.org, a website that hosts public petitions, crashed Friday morning after a flood of users signed a petition to investigate a controversial Olympic figure skating result. Russia's Adelina Sotnikova won the gold medal in an upset over South Korea's Yuna Kim. After the event, a Change.org petition called "Open Investigation into Judging Decisions of Women's Figure Skating and Demand Rejudgement at the Sochi Olympics" was started by a user named "Justice Seeker." It went viral in a way the website had never seen before. "The petition gained 700,000-plus signatures in just six hours and is sending traffic to our site...

Dear Entertainment Tonight: You had invited me to do an interview concerning the Ladies’ Figure Skating results and my advice for gold medal winners. I had agreed subject to you allowing me to also use the interview to raise awareness to the more than 70 people killed and 600 injured in the Ukraine in their fight against Ukrainian government corruption. Unfortunately, you pulled a “bait and switch” on me and instead dealt with issues in your program irrelevant to anything that we had agreed to discuss. I should have known better than to trust you after having only recently learned...

What's missing from this list of people Mika Brzezinski blasted on today's Morning Joe for "making a lot of money at the Olympics" while Vladimir Putin's suppression of democracy in the Ukraine unfolds: "the people performing there, the people competing there, the people sponsoring there"? Did you say NBC, Mika's own parent network? You get a gold medal! To whom does Mika think "the people sponsoring there" are paying their millions to promote their products? Has Mika not noticed that regular programming on MSNBC itself has been pre-empted by the Putin Olympics? View the video here.

A revealing reminder of the provincial, bubbled leftists that run our media can be found in an NBC News piece profiling Olympic gold medal skier David Wise. NBC informs us in its headline that what led Wise to Olympic gold was his "alternative lifestyle." NBC was apparently surprised to learn that, at 23-years-old, Wise is already a husband and father. At such a young age, Wise has the lifestyle of an adult. He wears a Baby Bjorn baby carrier around the house. He also attends church regularly and says he could see himself becoming a pastor a little later down...

American figure skater Johnny Weir has made quite an impression in Sochi working as a commentator for NBC during the Olympics. He frequently sports bright outfits, proclaimed his fearlessness in the face of Russia's anti-gay policies, and painted the town red (OK, pink) with fellow commentator Tara Lipinski. But on Wednesday, with his eyes on figure skating but his heart and mind on more pressing matters elsewhere, he used his fashion and his flamboyance to make a political statement. As only he can. Here is the statement: